NO
myabstract.docx Joe’s Filenames Use Spaces and Punctuation.xlsx figure 1.png fig 2.png JW7d^(2sl@deletethisandyourcareerisoverWx2*.txt
YES
2014-06-08_abstract-for-sla.docx joes-filenames-are-getting-better.xlsx fig01_scatterplot-talk-length-vs-interest.png fig02_histogram-talk-attendance.png 1986-01-28_raw-data-from-challenger-o-rings.txt
Machine readable
Human readable
Plays well with default ordering
Excerpt of complete file listing:
Example of globbing to narrow file listing:
Deliberate use of "-" and "_" allows recovery of meta-data from the filenames:
"_" underscore used to delimit units of meta-data I want later"-" hyphen used to delimit words so my eyes don't bleedThis happens to be R but also possible in the shell, Python, etc.
Easy to search for files later
Easy to narrow file lists based on names
Easy to extract info from file names, e.g. by splitting
foo and FooName contains info on content
Connects to concept of a slug from semantic URLs
Which set of file(name)s do you want at 3 a.m. before a deadline?
Easy to figure out what the heck something is, based on its name
Put something numeric first
Use the ISO 8601 standard for dates
Left pad other numbers with zeros
Chronological order:
Logical order: Put something numeric first
Use the ISO 8601 standard for dates: YYYY-MM-DD
If you don’t left pad, you get this:
10_final-figs-for-publication.R 1_data-cleaning.R 2_fit-model.R
which is just sad :(
Put something numeric first
Use the ISO 8601 standard for dates
Left pad other numbers with zeros
Machine readable
Human readable
Plays well with default ordering
Easy to implement NOW
Payoffs accumulate as your skills evolve and projects get more complex